Karmic
Relations

Rudolf
Steiner

Volume
Four, Lecture Five

Cathedral of Chartres-interior

Dornach,
September 14, 1924 (GA 238)

Having
spoken so often about the School of Chartres and its great
significance for the inner spiritual life of the West, I have
received a welcome gift during the last few days: a gift of
pictures, some of which have been put up here for you to see.
Others will be added next Tuesday. In these pictures you will see
what wonderful architectural works and works of sculpture in the
mediaeval sense, arose at the place where flourished that
spiritual life of which I have now spoken so often.

The
personalities who were gathered in the School of Chartres still
had the impulse, even in the 12th century, to enter as teachers or
students into the living spiritual life that had arisen in the
turning-point of time — I mean in the epoch of European
evolution when humanity, inasmuch as they were seekers after
knowledge, still sought it in the living weaving and working of
the nature-beings, and not in the conception of empty and abstract
natural laws.

Thus
in the School of Chartres there was a deep devotion to spiritual
powers, notably to those that hold sway in Nature. All this was
cultivated there – no longer, it is true, by initiates into
the ancient Mysteries – but by personalities who had the
heart and mind to receive from tradition much that had once been
direct spiritual experience. And I have told you of the mysterious
radiations of light from the School of Chartres which we can truly
recognise in the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of
Dante. I tried to explain how the individualities of Chartres
worked on in the spiritual worlds in unison with those who
afterwards descended [to earth], mostly in the Dominican Order, as
the bearers of Scholasticism. We may put it thus: The
individualities of Chartres were obliged to see, out of the signs
of the times, that there would be no place for them within the
earthly life until the time of Michael, which was to begin at the
end of the 19th century, should have been working for a while on
earth.

In
a far-reaching sense these individualities of Chartres took part
in the super-sensible teachings of which I spoke last time —
teachings that were given under the aegis of Michael himself, so
as to pour forth impulses which were to hold good for the
spiritual life of coming centuries. And it may be said indeed that
anyone who would devote himself to the cultivation of spiritual
life today must necessarily stand under the influence of those
great impulses.

Broadly
speaking we may say that there have been very few reincarnations
of the spirits of Chartres hitherto. Nevertheless it was granted
to me to look back upon the School of Chartres through a certain
stimulus, if I may describe it so, which came to me out of the
life of the present time.

There
was a monk in the School of Chartres who was altogether devoted to
the life that existed in that school. But in the School of
Chartres, especially if one was truly devoted to it, one felt as
if it were a twilight mood of the spiritual life. All that was
reminiscent still of the great and deep impulses of spiritual
Platonism that had been handed down — all this was living in
Chartres. But it lived in such a way that the bearers of the
spiritual life of Chartres said to themselves: In the future,
alas, the civilisation of Europe will no longer be receptive for
this living Platonic spirituality.

It
is touching to see how the School of Chartres preserves the
portraits of the inspiring genii of the Seven Liberal Arts, as
they were called: Grammatica, Dialectica, Rhetorica,
Arithmetica, Geometría, Astronomía and Musica.
Even in the reception of the Spirit that was contained in the
Seven Liberal Arts, they still saw in them the living gifts of the
gods, coming to man through spiritual beings. They did not see the
mere communication of dead thoughts about dead laws of Nature. And
they could see that Europe in the future would no longer be
receptive to these things. Hence there was a feeling of twilight
in spiritual life.

One
of those monks who was especially devoted to the teachings and the
works of Chartres was, after all, reincarnated in our time. He was
reincarnated, moreover, in such a way that one could find in this
case most wonderfully the echo and reflection of the former life.
This personality lived in our time as a writer who was not only my
acquaintance, but my friend. [Marie Eugenie delle Grazie.] She
died a considerable time ago. She bore within her a strange mood
of soul, about which I have not spoken until now, although I
observed it many years ago. To speak of these things has indeed
only been possible since the Christmas Conference took place in
our Anthroposophical Society. For this has brought a peculiar
illumination over these things, and it is possible, as I have
already said, to speak about such matters openly and without
embarrassment today.

When
one was in conversation with that writer, she returned again and
again to the idea that she would like to die. But her desire to
die did not spring from a sentimental or hypochondriac, nay, not
even from a melancholic mood of soul. If one had the psychological
vision to enter into such things, one found that far, far back
into her soul: it is the echo and reflection of a former life on
earth. In a former life on earth a seed was planted which now
comes forth, I will not say in the longing for death, but in this
feeling that the soul, being now incarnated, yet has nothing
really to do in this present age.

Her
writings, too, are of this nature. They seem to be written out of
a different world — not indeed as to their facts and
communications — but as to their mood and feeling. And we
can understand this mood only if we find the way from the dim
light of her writings, from the dim light that lived as a
fundamental disposition in her own soul, back to that monk of
Chartres who felt in Chartres the twilight mood of a living
Platonism.

With
this writer it was not a question of temperament or melancholy or
sentimentality; it was the raying-in of a former life on earth.
And her present soul was like a mirror into which the life of
Chartres penetrated. Not indeed the content of the teachings of
Chartres, but their moods and feelings, had been transmitted from
the one life to the other in this personality. Transplanting
oneself into these moods, and looking back, one could receive in
them spiritual photographs of the personalities who are also to be
found by direct spiritual research in the worlds where they now
are — the personalities who taught in Chartres.

Thus
you see, life brings to me in many ways the karmic possibilities
to gaze into these matters. Last time, I described my experiences
with the Cistercian Order. Today I would supplement what I then
said by referring to the twilight mood of the School of Chartres,
which penetrated into the heart and soul of an extraordinarily
interesting personality who lived again in the present time. She
has long ago found her way back into the worlds for which she
longed. She has found her way back to the Fathers of Chartres. And
if her whole soul-life had not been dominated by a kind of
weariness as the karmic outcome of the mood-of-soul of those monks
of Chartres, I could scarcely imagine a personality more fitted to
behold the spiritual life of the present day in connection with
the traditional life of the Middle Ages.

There
is another thing which I would mention here. When there are such
karmic impulses working deep in the foundations of the soul, we
find what is otherwise a very rare occurrence: we find in the
physical expression of the countenance in a later incarnation, a
likeness to the former. The face of that monk and of the writer of
the present time were indeed extraordinarily alike.

Now
in these connections I will pass on to the karma of the
Anthroposophical Society, or rather of the individualities of its
members. As I said last time, many of the souls who stand
sincerely within the Anthroposophical Movement were connected
somewhere and somewhen with that stream of Michael which I must
now characterise. You will remember all that I have said in this
connection about Alexander and Aristotle and about the events in
super-sensible worlds at the time when the 8th Council in
Constantinople took place. You will remember what I said of the
continuation, in the spiritual and in the physical worlds, of the
Court of Haroun al Raschid, until at length I spoke of that
super-sensible School which stood under the aegis of Michael
himself. Deeply significant was the teaching of that School. On
the one hand it pointed again and again to the connections with
the ancient Mysteries, to all that must now come forth once more
in a new form from the content of the ancient Mysteries, to
permeate modern civilisation with spirituality. On the other hand
it pointed to the impulses which souls, devoted to the spiritual
life, must have for their work into the future. And we know that
from an understanding of the spiritual stream we may also come to
understand how Anthroposophy, in its real essence, signifies the
impulse for a renewal, for a true and sincere understanding of the
Christ-Impulse.

In
the Anthroposophical Movement we find two kinds of souls. A large
number of them have partaken in those currents which were, so to
speak, the officially Christian ones in the first centuries. They
witnessed what came into the world as Christianity, notably in the
times of Constantine, and immediately after him. Many of those who
approached Christianity with the very deepest sincerity at that
time and received it with inner depth, many of them are found in
the Anthroposophical Society today with the deep impulse towards
an understanding of Christianity. I do not mean so much the
Christians who followed such movements as that of Constantine
himself; I rather mean those Christians who claimed to be the true
Christians, who were distributed in different Christian sects. In
those Christian sects we find many of the souls who today approach
the Anthroposophical Movement sincerely, though often through
subconscious impulses which the surface consciousness may even
misinterpret.

But
there are other souls: there are those who did not partake
directly in that development of Christianity. They either partook
in Christianity at a later stage of its development when the deep
inner life of the sects was no longer there, or on the other hand
— and this is the most important — they still had,
living in the depths of their souls, much of what was experienced
in pre-Christian time as the ancient wisdom of the heathen
Mysteries. They too often partook in Christianity, but it did not
make so deep an impression upon them as upon the other souls
described before. For there still remained alive in them the
impression of the teachings, the rituals and practices of ancient
Mysteries. Among those who have entered the Anthroposophical
Movement in this way we find many who are seeking for the Christ
in an abstract sense. The other souls above described are happy,
so to speak, to find Christianity once more within the
Anthroposophical Movement. But many of the souls I mean grasp with
real inner understanding the Cosmic Christianity which
Anthroposophy contains. Christ as the Cosmic Spirit of the Sun is
grasped most especially by the souls (and they are very numerous
in the Anthroposophical Movement) in the depths of whom much is
still living of what they underwent in connection with ancient
heathen Mysteries.

Now
all this is deeply connected with the currents of the whole
spiritual life of mankind in the present time — I mean the
present time in a wider sense, reaching over decades and
centuries.

Anthroposophy
after all has grown out of the spiritual life of the present time,
and though in its contents it has nothing directly in common with
this spiritual life, karmically it has grown out of it in many
ways. We must turn our eyes to many things which do not apparently
belong to what works in Anthroposophy directly, if we would
include in our spiritual horizon all that partook in the different
streams I have mentioned. I said a while ago that we only truly
understand what takes place outwardly on the physical plane if we
see in the background what is poured down from the fields of the
spirit into these events as they take place on the physical plane.
We must regain the courage to bring into our present life that
feeling of the ancient Mysteries. We must connect the physical
events not merely abstractly with a vaguely pantheistic or
theistic or whatever spiritual life. We must become able to trace
the detailed events, nay more, the inner experiences of people
within these events, to the spiritual source and background.

We
are led to do so among other things pertaining to the deepest
tasks of the present time. For in the present time we must seek
again for a real knowledge of man in body, soul and spirit —
not a knowledge rooted in abstract ideas or laws, but one that is
able to look into the true foundation of the human being as a
whole. To gain such knowledge man must be researched in his
conditions of health and sickness; and not in a merely physical
sense as is customary today, for then we should not learn to know
the human being. By merely physical knowledge we can never learn
to know what works so deeply into the life of man, determining his
destiny: his unhappiness, his sickness, his abilities or absence
of abilities. Karma in all its forms — this we can only know
if from the starting-point of the physical we can trace the
spiritual life of a man and his inner soul-life.

How
do people work, in the ordinary scientific striving of today? They
study the human being quite externally as to his organs, his
nerves, the blood vessels and so forth. But when the health and
sickness of someone are studied in this way one cannot find the
spirit and soul in these things.

Indeed
the anatomist or physiologist of today may well speak in the words
of a famous astronomer of the past, who, in answer to a question
which his sovereign had put to him, replied:“I have searched
through the whole universe, through all the stars and all their
movements, but I have found no God!” So said the astronomer.
And the anatomist or physiologist of today could say: “I
have searched through them all — heart and kidneys, stomach
and brain, blood-vessels and nerves — but I have found
neither soul nor spirit.”

All
the problems and difficulties of modern medicine are subject to
this influence. And all these things must be dealt with in the
Anthroposophical Movement today according to the tasks which are
placed before it. In general terms these questions must be
unfolded before the Anthroposophical Society as a whole; in detail
they must be treated in an expert way within the several groups.
Thus, for example, I am now speaking on Pastoral Medicine to a
group who are prepared for it by training and profession. Here we
must seek the way into those great connections which proceed from
the workings of the streams of karma. In times to come it will be
seen how pathology and therapeutics, how the observation of man in
sickness and disease, will make it absolutely necessary to enter
into the deep questions of the soul and spirit. As I have said
again and again, the external and physical — the physical as
presented by natural science — is to be respected in the
fullest sense. Yet people will find themselves compelled to take
into account the higher members of man's nature when considering
disease and health. This will be seen in the book [Fundamentals
of Therapy; an Extension of the Art of Healing throughSpiritualKnowledge,by
Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman, English translation by George
Adams] on which my dear fellow-worker Dr. Ita Wegman and I are
working together, on the subject of man in health and in illness.
Now these researches especially, seeking the ways of entry from
the physical man into the spiritual, can only lead to good and
promising results if we set about them in the right way. For in
such work we must not only use the knowledge-forces of the
present, but we must use the knowledge-forces which arise by
picking up the threads of karma — the karmic threads
proceeding from the history and evolution of mankind. We must
indeed work with the forces of karma in order to penetrate these
secrets.

In
the first volume only the beginnings of our work will be
published. The work will then be carried forward and from the more
elementary expositions we shall proceed to unfold the particular
knowledge of man which can arise from this medical, therapeutic
and pathological aspect of spiritual science. This work has only
been made possible through the presence in Dr. Wegman of a
personality whose medical studies have enabled her evolve quite
naturally, as a matter of course, towards a spiritual conception
and perception of the human being.

Now
it is in the course of these researches, when we behold in
spiritual perspective all the workings of the human organs, that
those perceptions also arise which lead us in turn to the deeper
karmic connections. The same manner of perception must be evolved
to perceive the spiritual realities that underlie, not the whole
man, but his various organs. (For, if you will, it is the Jupiter
world that underlies one organ, the Venus world that underlies
another, and so forth.) The same insight which we must evolve in
this direction, leads also to the possibility of perceiving human
personalities in past earthly lives. For in the present earthly
life man stands before us within the limits of his skin. But when
we become able to gaze into his individual organs, what was
contained within the skin expands and expands. Each of the organs
points us to a different direction of the universe. The organs
prepare the roads that lead us far out into the macrocosm, until
far out yonder the human being once again appears as a complete
and rounded whole. It is the human being built up once more in the
spirit, having transcended the present form, the form that is
enclosed within the skin — it is this that we need. For the
sum-total of the human organs — which even physically is
altogether different from what the present-day anatomist or
physiologist conceives — when we trace it out into the
cosmos, leads to perceptions which correspond in turn to the
spiritual perception of the former earthly lives of man. Then we
experience the inner connections that shed their light upon the
evolution and history of mankind, explaining what exists
physically today. For in reality the whole past of human beings
lives in the present time. Yet the vague and abstract saying by
itself is of no avail. Materialists too will say the same. The
point is to perceive how the past is living in the present.

And
of this I would now give you an example, an example which is in
itself so wonderful that it called forth in me the greatest
imaginable wonder when I first came to it as a result of spiritual
research. And many things which I have said before must now be
rectified, or at any rate must be completed, by that which I shall
now set forth.

You
see, for one who studies history with feeling for its inner
meaning, a certain event in the first centuries of Christianity is
wrapped in the atmosphere of a strange mystery. We see on the one
side a personality of whom we may well think that in his inner
life he was little fitted to grasp Christianity or to make it what
it then became, the official Christianity of the West. I mean the
Emperor Constantine, of whom we have so often spoken. Then, side
by side with him (not literally of course, but gazing back into
that age from a considerable distance in time), side by side with
Constantine we see Julian the Apostate. Julian the
Apostate was one in whom the wisdom of the Mysteries was living.
He spoke of a Threefold Sun. Indeed he lost his life through being
regarded as a betrayer of the Mysteries, because he spoke about
the Threefold Sun. Of these things it was no longer allowed to
speak in his time; still less would it have been allowed in
earlier times. But Julian the Apostate stood in a peculiar
relation to Christianity. In a certain sense we must again and
again be surprised that the genius, the fine spirituality and
intellect of Julian was so little receptive to the greatness of
Christianity. It was simply due to the fact that in his
environment he saw very little of what he conceived as a true
inner sincerity, whereas among those who introduced him to the
ancient Mysteries he found great sincerity, positive, active
sincerity. Such was the case with Julian the Apostate.

Yonder
in Asia he was murdered. Many a fable is told about the murder.
The truth is that it took place because he was regarded as a
betrayer of the Mysteries. It was a murder altogether
pre-arranged.

Now
if we make ourselves to some extent acquainted with what lived in
Julian we cannot but be deeply interested in the question: How did
his individuality live on in later times? For his was a peculiar
individuality, one of whom it must be said that he would have been
better fitted than Constantine, better than Clodvig and all the
others, to make straight the ways of Christianity. This lay
inherent in his soul. If the time had been favourable, if the
conditions had existed, he could have brought about out of the
ancient Mysteries a straightforward continuation from the
pre-Christian Christ, the true macrocosmic Logos, to the Christ
who was to work on within mankind after the Mystery of Golgotha.
He was indeed a vessel well prepared. Strange as it may sound, we
find it so, if we enter into his true spirit. We find in the
foundations of his soul the true impulse to grasp Christianity.
But he did not let it emerge, he suppressed it, misled by the
stupidities which Celsus had written about Jesus. It does indeed
happen now and then that men of real genius are led astray by the
stupidest effusions of their fellow-men. Thus we may have the
feeling: Julian would really have been the soul to make straight
the ways of Christianity and to bring Christianity into its true
and proper channel.

We
now leave the soul of Julian the Apostate in that earthly life and
follow the same individuality with the highest interest through
spiritual worlds. But there is always something vague and unclear
about it. Only the most intense spiritual striving can come at
length to a clear perception of his further course.

On
many matters very adequate ideas existed in the Middle Ages. They
might be legendary, but they were adequate; they corresponded to
the real events. Legendary though they may be, how adequate are
the narratives that centred round the personality of Alexander the
Great. How vividly his life appears, as I already said, in the
description of Lamprecht the Priest!

But
that which lives on of Julian, lives on in such a way that we must
say again and again: It seeks to disappear from before the vision
of humanity. And as we seek to follow it we have the greatest
difficulty in keeping it within our spiritual field of vision.
Again and again it escapes us. We trace it through the centuries
into the Middle Ages and it escapes us. But when at length we do
succeed in following it to the end, we land at a strange place,
which though it be not historic in the proper sense, is in reality
more than historic. We come at length to the figure of a woman, in
whom we find again the soul of Julian the Apostate. It was a woman
who accomplished an important deed in her life under the
impression of an essentially painful event. For she beheld, not in
herself, but in the person of another, an image of the fate of
Julian the Apostate, inasmuch as Julian the Apostate went on a
campaign to the East and there lost his life by treachery.

The
woman whom I mean is Herzeleide, the mother of
Parsifal, who was an historic character, though history itself
tells nothing of her. In Gamuret, whom she married and who lost
his life through treachery upon an Eastern campaign, she was
pointed to her own destiny in the former life as Julian the
Apostate. This went deep into her soul, and under this impression
she achieved what is told to us in a legendary way — yet it
is historic in the truest sense — of the education of
Parsifal by Herzeleide.

The
soul of Julian the Apostate who had remained thus in the depths
and of whom one would believe that it should have been his very
mission to prepare the right way for Christianity — this
soul is found again in the Middle Ages in the body of a woman who
sent out Parsifal to seek and to find the esoteric paths for
Christianity.

Mysterious
like this, full of riddles, are the paths of mankind in the
background, in the foundations of existence. This example —
and it is strangely interwoven with the one which I already told
you in connection with the School of Chartres — this example
may make you realise how wonderful are the paths of the human soul
and the paths of evolution for all mankind.

We
shall continue speaking of it in the next lecture, when I shall
have more to say of the life of Herzeleide and of what was then
sent forth, physically, in Parsifal. I shall begin next time at
this point where we must break off today.